it will have a very negative effect on the economy. if you're running a business and you have to fly salespeople or engineers around the country, you're going to discover with 4,000 fewer air traffic controllers, that plane may not get there. all across the economy, this is going to be a terrible problem because this is government spending, ed, that allows the private sector to prosper and to grow. it's commonwealth spending for common good. >> is there any way to suggest that the stimulus did not help pull us out of a recession? had we not done it, where would we be? >> had we not done it we would be in a terrible disaster. we lost trillions of dollars of wealth, and yet we didn't have rampant homelessness. why? because the stimulus included money to make sure that people who were going to lose their homes, especially with children, didn't end up on the streets. that is certainly not good. >> if we go down the road with the sequester, and the cuts kick in, i mean, are we going to go right back into a recession? and how fast would it h